TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — There was one major deciding factor in Cierra Gilliam’s decision about where to go to college.
When she toured the University of Alabama’s flagship campus in Tuscaloosa, her guide took her to the Black Student Union office on the first floor of the student center. Gilliam said there were Black students there offering resources for trips to and from the airport, as well as hair salons in Tuscaloosa that could style Black hair, and insights about what it was like to live at a predominantly white institution.
Gilliam said that the Black Student Union’s visible presence on campus was one of the main reasons that her parents let her go to school a nine-hour drive away in an unfamiliar state.
Last week, however, at the outset of her senior year, the Black Student Union announced that the group would no longer have a designated place on campus, in compliance with recent statewide legislation that prohibits public universities and state agencies from allocating resources to diversity equity and inclusion programs –- often referred to as DEI.
“It feels terrible, like there is no place to go,” Gilliam said. “They ripped all the signage and things down, and there is nothing left.”
Under the bill signed by Gov. Kay Ivey in March, DEI is defined as classes, training, programs and events where attendance is based on a person’s race, sex, gender identity, ethnicity, national origin or sexual orientation.
Similar initiatives from both Republican legislatures and university school boards have taken aim at DEI on college campuses across the country.
A decades-old Black student organization at the University of Missouri was forced to strip some longstanding traditions of explicit references to race. The University of Florida in Gainesville axed its diversity and inclusion offices, letting 13 staff members go and removing appointments to the diversity office for 15 faculty members. Faculty at the University of North Carolina’s flagship school have expressed apprehension about what recent changes to diversity policy means for curriculum and future students.
At the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, a queer resource center called Safe Zone was also shuttered.
Safe Zone had a full-time staff position along with a number of paid positions held by students, said Alex House, the associate director of communications at the University of Alabama. Safe Zone used university funding to provide educational services and counseling to queer students and acted as a liaison between students and the administration. Safe Zone’s full time staff position was vacant when the office was shut down, and paid student employees were given opportunities to work elsewhere, House said.
Queer Student Association president Bryce Schottelkotte, 21, said that as much as she would like to replace the services that were previously offered by Safe Zone, she feels very limited as the uncompensated head of a student organization.
“I’m a senior student who is trying to get my degree and pay my rent and make my money,” Schottelkotte said. “I care very much about QSA, but I just don’t have the time or ability to focus every single thing in my day on QSA.”
Both the Queer Student Association and the Black Student Union are still free to reserve meeting rooms on campus that are available to all student groups. But neither group will receive any designated resources from the school.
“The University will continue to provide resources and support to every member of our campus community,” House said in an emailed statement.
Only 11% of the student body at the University of Alabama is Black. Black people make up over 25% of the population statewide, according to the 2020 U.S. Census. The University of Alabama was integrated in 1963 over objections from then-Gov. George Wallace.
The president of the Black Student Union, Jordan Stokes, said that many members of the Black Alumni Association have reached out to offer financial and organizational support after the school revoked all funding and resources.
